Your Article Summary

Yang YW, et al. – This nationwide population–based study investigated the risk of Parkinson's disease (PD) after zolpidem use in patients with sleep disturbance using the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) in Taiwan. Among the patients with sleep disturbance, zolpidem use increased the risk of PD after 5 years of follow–up. Further mechanistic research of zolpidem effect in PD is needed.Methods

In total, 59548 adult patients newly diagnosed with sleep disturbance and who used zolpidem were recruited as the study cohort, along with 42171 subjects who did not use zolpidem as a comparison cohort from 2002 to 2009.

Each patient was monitored for 5 years, and those who subsequently had PD were identified.

A Cox proportional hazards model was used to compare the risk of PD between the study and comparison cohorts after adjusting for possible confounding risk factors.

Results

The patients who received zolpidem had a higher cumulative rate of PD than those who did not receive zolpidem during the 5-year follow-up period (1.2% vs. 0.5%, P < 0.001).

The adjusted hazard ratios were 1.10 (95% CI, 0.88 to 1.37), 1.41(95% CI, 1.17 to 1.72), and 1.27 (95% CI, 1.05 to 1.55) for zolpidem use with 28 to 90, 91 to 365, and more than 365 cumulative defined daily doses (cDDDs), respectively, compared to those who did not use zolpidem.